Birmingham City players given break to prepare for the end of the season

Birmingham City head coach Gianfranco Zola has told the club website that he has given his players a few days off so they can prepare for the end of the season run in.

After having a ram packed schedule for the last few months, both the players and the fans will have some time to breathe because of the international break. This means that Birmingham won’t play for little under a fortnight, with their next match set to be against Ipswich Town on the 1st April.

And with it set to be a tough run in at the end of the season with the Second City derby against Aston Villa being the most notable fixture in those last few games, Zola has decided to give his squad a few days leave at the start of the international break. He then expects them to be raring to go when they return to training and be fresh for those crucial end of the season games.

He said: “The players have been playing a lot of games and they need to recover so they will have three or four days off at the beginning of the week.”

“Then they will come back and work all the way through to the game against Ipswich.

“We are going to use most of the time to train, we need to train and to do a lot of stuff.

“It’s a very, very important time, I have been crying out for this time for weeks and weeks.”